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Class^ 
Book 



JIddress by tDe 
master of Jllbion 
lodge on tbe m- 
niversary of Citt= 
coin's Blrtbday '06 



A XRIBUXI 

TO XME 

MEMORV 

OR 



/?7 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 




AIL.BION UODQE No. 2e, R. Oc A. M. 

February 12, 1Q06 



i- 






"HOW IS THE SPIRIT OF A FREE 
PEOPLE TO BE FORMED, AND 
ANIMATED, AND CHEERED, BUT 
OUT OF THE STOREHOUSE OF ITS 
HISTORIC RECOLLECTIONS ! " 

Everett. 






%^km Ij t\t ^mitx. 



PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE LODGE. 



On February 13th, 1809, ninety-seven years ago, 
there was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, in the 
log cabin of a poor farmer, one whose name will 
remain linked with that of Washington, one o£ the 
greatest names, that history has inscribed on its 
annals. It has seemed to me, fitting and proper^ 
that on this anniversary of his birth, we, the 
members of Albion Lodge, pay our tribute to the 
memory of Abraham Lincoln, philosopher, orator, 
and statesman, by recalling the great principles 
that he defended and the majestic simplicity of 
the man. His career has often been described and 
his character analyzed, but the story cannot be 
told too often. The old hymns usually sound 
better than the new ones and we can afford to 
travel old paths when they lead to hallowed 
ground. As American citizens, we are bound to 
do everything in our power to keep alive the 
memory of him whom we humbly acknowledge 



3 



and reverently proclaim the savior of our Republic. 
So, to-night, on tliis anniversary of his birth, some 
of the old things should be said, and everywhere 
throughout our land, in the epoch of peace and 
increasing prosperity that is dawning, they will 
surely be said every year more simply and sin- 
cerely. 

I scarcely suppose that there is one present 
who has not read his Gettysburg address. It is 
known wherever the English language is spoken, 
and so I shall, w4th your permission, refresh our 
recollection of this gem of clear, expressive and 
persuasive eloquence. Although we are told that 
it was hastily penned on a piece of crumpled 
paper, and read awkwardly from this poorly 
written manuscript, it cannot fail to be treas- 
ured from generation to generation of American 
citizens as the only adequate tribute to this 
martyred President, who carried the sorrows of 
his country as truly as he bore its burdens in the 
dark hours of civil war. 

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth upon this continent a new nation, 
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the pro- 
position that all men are created equal. 

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, 
testing whether that nation, or any nation so con- 
ceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are 
met on a great battlefield of that war. We have 



come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final 
resting-place for those who here gave their lives 
that that nation might live. It is altogether fit- 
ting and proper that we should do this. 

" But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, 
we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this 
ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 
struggled here, have consecrated it far above our 
power to aid or detract. The world will little note 
nor long remember, what we say here, but it can 
never forget what they did here. It is for us, the 
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinish- 
ed work which they who fought here have thus 
far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be 
here dedicated to the great task remaining before 
us; that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to that cause for which they 
gave the last full measure of devotion ; that we 
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have 
died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall 
have a new birth of freedom ; and that govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, and for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth." 

And then we recall the conclusion of his first 
inaugural address : — 

"Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity and a 
firm reliance or Him, who has never yet forsaken 
this favored land, are still competent to adjust 
in the best way all our present difficulty. 



" In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-country- 
men, and not in mine, in the momentous issue of 
civil war. The government will not assail you. 
You can have no conflict without being your- 
selves the aggressors. You have no oath regis- 
tered in heaven to destroy the government ; while 
I shall have the most solemn one to ' preserve, 
protect and defend it. ' 

"I am loath to close. "We are not enemies, but 
friends We must not be enemies. Though 
passions may have strained, it must not break our 
bonds of affection. The mystic chords of mem- 
ory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot 
grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all 
over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of 
the Union when again touched, as surely they will 
be, by the better angels of our nature.'' 

And reading from his second Annual Message, 

•' Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if 
adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen 
its expenditure of money and of blood? Is it 
doubted that it would restore the national author- 
ity and national prosperity and perpetuate both 
indefinitely? Is it doubted that we here, — 
Congress and Executive— can secure its adoption ? 
Will not the good people respond to a united and 
earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by 
any other means, so certainly or so speedily assure 
these vital objects ? We can succeed only by con- 



cert. It is not, — ' Can any of us imagine better', 
but 'Can we all do better '? Object whatsoever is 
possible, still the question recurs, 'Can we do 
better ' ? The dogmas of the quiet past are inade. 
quate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled 
high with difficulty, and we must rise with the 
occasion. As our case is new, so we must think 
anew and act anew. We must disenthrall our 
selves, and then we shall save our country. 

" Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We 
of this Congress and this Administration will be 
remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal 
significance or insignificance can spare one or 
another of us. The fiery trial through which we 
pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to 
the latest generation. We say we are for the 
Union. The world will not forget that we say 
this. We know how to save the Union. The 
world knows we do know how to save it. We, 
even we here, hold the power and bear the 
responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we 
assure freedom to the free —honorable alike in 
what we give and what we preserve. We shall 
nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of 
earth." 

And finally we read from the conclusion of his 
second Inaugural Address, when the great civil 
contest was still absorbing the attention of the 
nation : — 



" With malice toward none, with charity for 
all,' with firmness in the right as God gives us to see 
the right, let us strive on to finish the work we 
are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for 
him who shall have borne the battle, and for his 
widow and his orphan, to do all which may 
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
among ourselves and with all nations " 

Who was this man who rose from obscurity to 
occupy the most exalted and honored station 
within the gift of a free people ? Born on a farm, 
in poverty, reared without the advantages of 
schools, but persistently training and disciplining 
himself and extending his knowledge by his 
marvelous powers of observation, learning to 
read and write by the light of the kitchen fire, in 
the woods of Indiana, a boat-n<an on the Mis- 
sissippi, an awkward farm hand of the Sangamon, 
who covered his bare feet in the fresh dirt which 
his plow had turned up, to keep them from 
getting sun burned, the country lawyer who 
rode on horseback from county to county 
with nothing in his saddle bags except a clean 
shirt and the Code of Illinois, to try his cases and 
to air his views in the cheerful company which 
always gathered about the Court House, the 
daring debater of whom it was said that his 
clothes did not fit him, that he stretched his long 
legs in ungainly postures, that he was common 



8 



and uncouth in his appearance, his critics little 
dreaming that the rude cabin yonder on the edge 
of the hill country of Kentucky was about to be 
transformed by the tender imagination of the 
people into a mansion more stately than the 
White House itself. The cabin of Nancy Hanks 
did not shelter the childhood of a king, but more 
royal than all the palaces of earth, it was the first 
habitation of one of nature's noblemen, possessing 
the highest and noblest qualities of manhood, spot- 
less integrity and unbounded faith in the Union 
of these United States. 

As has been well said by a master of epigram, 
his was the power that commanded admiration 
and the humanity that invited love ; he possessed 
a head that commanded men and a heart that 
attracted babes. He leaned upon no fiction 
of nobility and kissed no hand to obtain his lank, 
but the stamp of nobility and power which he 
wore, was conferred upon him in that log hut in 
Kentucky, that day in 1809, when he and Nancy 
Hanks were first seen together and it w&s con- 
firmed by a power, which, unlike earthly poten- 
tates, never confers a title without a character 
that will adorn it. 

Regarding Lincoln while the important thing 
is of course to comprehend ^lat he became, what 
he did and what he taught,— yet we love to dwell 
on the becoming, — the early processes, and to go 



over the dramatic outward incidents of his life. 
He received his education from contact veith his 
fellow men in every station of life, and by his 
marvelous powers of observation learned to 
understand their weaknesses and their strength, 
and understanding, learned to sympathize. He 
knew men, as only one can whose knowledge is 
derived from experience. 

We follow him from Kentucky into Indiana. 
We see him at school there, in the open woods all 
day and by the firelight after the day's work was 
done. We take interest in nis early manhood ; we 
see him at his athletics in that wide, leafy, whis- 
pering gymnasium of his, — axe in hand, — building 
him a body of iron ; and we see him in the solitude 
of nature with the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress 
and Shakespeare and the Declaration of Independ- 
ence and the Constitution of the United States ; 
and who would have the temerity to doubt that 
these professors of his, Moses, and David, and 
Isaiah, and Bunyan, and Shakespeare, and Wash- 
ington, and Jefferson, and the Great World of 
Nature, are never in the future to be in 'dny wise 
ashamed of their handiwork. 

In 1830 we see him moving his family, with 
their scant and meagre chattels, westward to 
Illinois ; we see him on his southern journey float- 
ing slowly down to his first shuddering contact 
with human slavery ; — that thing which he said, 



10 



"had, and continually exercised, the power of 
making him miserable." He is a farm laborer, a 
flat boatman, a clerk, a small merchant. He 
meditates becoming a blacksmith. He is a captain 
in the Black Hawk war. He becomes a surveyor 
and a postmaster, and finally devotes himself to 
the study and practice of the law. He is elected 
in 1834 one of the members of the Illinois Legis- 
lature and in A.ugust 1846 a Repret^entative to Con- 
gress where he only serves one term, for he finds 
it disappointing and resolves to give up politics, 

And now, after a considerable interval of quiet 
professional life, comes an ominous and fateful 
year, The rumblings of coming conflict between 
North and South are heard. 

The period of mutual restraint is at an end ; 
slavery must be extended and live, or it must be 
restricted and die. Positive law can no longer 
withstand the onslaughts of ethical law. The 
Missouri Compromise is repealed and the great 
battle has begun. 

The year 1854, marks the beginning of the last 
decade of Lincoln's life. It marks the beginning 
of his ministry. Now we are to find out what 
manner of man he has become, and what place 
he is to hold in the history of the nation, and of 
the world. From this time on he stands always 
in the white light. From this on w^e can see for 
ourselves the great, patient purpose driving, the 



11 



greafc intellect executing, the great heart suffering. 
What a marvelous record he has left in his 
letters, speeches, messages and proclamations, 
models of clear exposition abounding in patriotism, 
wisdom and common sense ! 

He believed in the Declaration of Independence. 
He believed that the suffering, the life and death 
struggle of the Eevolutionary Fathers, lifted them 
for the time-being, to new heights of spiritual 
vision: and that in the end they conquered not 
merely the armies of King George, but they con- 
quered themselves and Old World prejudices, and 
inherited evils and errors. The Declaration was 
the source of all his political sentiment : he fre- 
quently said so. It is the text of all his political 
teaching and the motive of all his political meas- 
ures, and runs like a strand of gold through the 
whole fibre of his life. 

"All men are created equal," He believed in 
equality. In that attitude of mind under which 
society says to every one not, "What have you ?", 
not "Whence came you ?", race, caste, class, 
color?— but simply "What are you?" "What can 
you do ?" He believed that equality was the very 
sun of the true social and political system. 

He not only believed in the Declaration as a re- 
ligion, but he understood it as a policy— definite, 
clear cut and practical, he saw more and more, as 
time went on, the spread of intelligence that lay 



13 



in it, the growth of virtue that lay in it,, the in- 
crease of wealth that lay in it, the perpetual har- 
vest of patriotism, of manhood, of national 
strength and power, to spring from that simply 
stated truth if really understood and faithfully 
followed. History has certainly justified his faith 
and we have seen his prophesies realized. 

He appreciated the value of the Union. The 
Union was everything. The extreme abolution- 
ists hating slavery, were demanding immediate 
universal emancipation ; otherwise, dis-union. The 
extreme Southern leaders, as you remember under- 
standing slavery, — that it must be extended or die, 
were demanding extension or dis-union and seces- 
sion. And there were those who said "Let the 
erring sisters go," accepting the doctrine of State 
Rights through indifference. 

Mr. Lincoln saw, that to give up the Union was 
to confess the failure of free institutions before the 
world,— the inability of democracy to maintain 
itself in a crisis. The spirit of slavery and the 
spirit of the Declaration of Independence cannot 
stand together. As he said in 1858 to the conven- 
tion which placed him in nomination against 
Douglas. " A house divided against itself cannot 
stand, I believe, this government cannot endure 
permanently half slave and half free, I do not 
expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect 
the house to fall, but I do expect that h will cease 



13 



to be divided." 

Quoting from the eulogy of Congressman James 
Willis Gleed:— 

" There have been leaders of men who awe and 
dazzle us like the storm. Rut beyond the roar and 
dazzle of the storm, above the angry cloud, behind 
the thunderbolt, is the Firmament, is Providence, 
is Supreme Intelligence, emanating from the great 
Architect of the Universe. So the silent, patient, 
intelligent Lincoln, always supremely sane, keen 
witted and practical stands in majestic nakedness 
an instrument in the hands of Providence to save 
a nation. 

*'Mr. Lincoln was not a self-made man, nor a 
luck-made man, but a God-made man, — God need- 
ed him, and God made him, and God took him." 
When the great sad eyes were closed, Stanton 
said, "And now he belongs to the ages". Let us 
brethern, thank God for Abraham Lincoln, 
the inspiration of patriotism brought by the record 
of his prophetic words and noble deeds no less than 
for the blessings of prosperity and happiness which 
we now enjoy, for which he labored not in vain. 



14 



LRB D '13 



